Yageo Corp (國巨), one of the world’s top three suppliers of passive components, yesterday said it is to launch a tender offer to fully acquire Japan’s Shibaura Electronics Co for up to ￥65.57 billion (US$429.37 million), with an aim to expand its sensor business.
The tender offer would be a crucial step for the company to expand its sensor business, Yageo said.
Shibaura Electronics is the world’s largest supplier of thermistors, with a market share of 13 percent, research conducted in 2022 by the Japanese firm showed.
Photo: CNA
If a deal goes ahead, it would be the second acquisition of a sensor business since Yageo purchased France-based Schneider Electric’s sensor unit in November 2023 for about 723 million euros (US$753.1 million at the currect exchange rate) as part of efforts to transform itself into a supplier of premium passive components.
Sensor business accounts for a small part of Yageo’s revenue, making up 9 percent in the third quarter of last year.
Thermistors are temperature-dependent resistors. Shibaura Electronics’ products are used in a wide variety of applications from vehicles, home appliances and medical devices to industrial equipment, the company’s Web site showed.
Yageo offered to buy Shibaura Electronics shares at ￥4,300 each, representing a 37 percent premium compared with the company’s share price of ￥3,141 on Tuesday in Tokyo, the company said in a statement.
The public tender offer would begin on May 7 through its wholly owned Japanese subsidiary, Yageo Electronics Japan, it said.
In the meantime, the firm would seek regulatory approval, it added.
Yageo expects to wrap up the deal in the third quarter of this year, it said in a separate statement submitted to the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday.
It hopes to acquire all 15.25 million common shares of Shibaura Electronics, but the tender offer would succeed if it meets the minimum acquisition number of 7.62 million shares, or approximately 50 percent of the planned acquisition, the statement said.
Shibaura Electronics has 4,800 employees worldwide, with annual revenue of ￥32 billion, the statement said.
Yageo hires more than 40,000 workers globally with annual revenue topping US$4 billion as a result of multiple merger-and-acquisition agreements.
Shares of contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) came under pressure yesterday after a report that Apple Inc is looking to shift some orders from the Taiwanese company to Intel Corp. TSMC shares fell NT$55, or 2.4 percent, to close at NT$2,235 on the local main board, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed. Despite the losses, TSMC is expected to continue to benefit from sound fundamentals, as it maintains a lead over its peers in high-end process development, analysts said. “The selling was a knee-jerk reaction to an Intel-Apple report over the weekend,” Mega International Investment Services Corp (兆豐國際投顧) analyst Alex Huang
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is expected to remain Apple Inc’s primary chip manufacturing partner despite reports that Apple could shift some orders to Intel Corp, industry experts said yesterday. The comments came after The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Apple and Intel had reached a preliminary agreement following more than a year of negotiations for Intel to manufacture some chips for Apple devices. Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (台灣經濟研究院) economist Arisa Liu (劉佩真) said TSMC’s advanced packaging technologies, including integrated fan-out and chip-on-wafer-on-substrate, remain critical to the performance of Apple’s A-series and M-series chips. She said Intel and Samsung
POWER BUILDUP: Powered by Nvidia’s B200 Blackwell chips, the data center would support MediaTek’s computing power demand and business growth, the company said Smartphone chip designer MediaTek Inc (聯發科) yesterday launched a new artificial intelligence (AI) data center with a maximum capacity of 45 megawatts to meet its rising demand for computing power required to develop new advanced chips for AI applications. The company has completed the first-phase computing power buildup at the data center in Miaoli County’s Tongluo Township (銅鑼), providing 15 megawatts of capacity to support its research and development (R&D) capabilities, despite an industrywide shortage of key components, MediaTek said. Supply constraints have plagued a wide range of key components, including memory chips, solid-state drives, power supply units and central
TRANSITION: With the closure, the company would reorganize its Taiwanese unit to a sales and service-focused model, Bridgestone said Bridgestone Corp yesterday announced it would cease manufacturing operations at its tire plant in Hsinchu County’s Hukou Township (湖口), affecting more than 500 workers. Bridgestone Taiwan Co (台灣普利司通) said in a statement that the decision was based on the Tokyo-based tire maker’s adjustments to its global operational strategy and long-term market development considerations. The Taiwanese unit would be reorganized as part of the closure, effective yesterday, and all related production activities would be concluded, the statement said. Under the plan, Bridgestone would continue to deepen its presence in the Taiwanese market, while transitioning to a sales and service-focused business model, it added. The Hsinchu
RSS